Thursday, December 3, 2009

We had an awesome time playing at The Watermark High's album launch. Well, right up to the point where the rain gate crashed their set after just one song. But that one song was undeniably worth it. Thanks to them. You can hear our remix of one of their songs on their myspace - http://www.myspace.com/thewatermarkhigh

So, yesterday evening we had a bit of time on our hands. We thought we'd try our hand at a Christmas song, you know, with the 35 degree Celsius heat, the thunderstorms dropping by unannounced, the year-tired attitudes we all exude, it just seemed Christmas-y.

Werner was picking away at an acoustic, trying to find "the sound of Christmas". I kept telling him he needs jingle bells. He got stuck on this one chord that basically became the key for the song, while I tried to figure out some lyrics.

The Pretoria heat got to me at this stage, and instead of thinking "Christmas = cozy", I started thinking "Christmas = claustrophobia". We've got heat and humidity that squeezes every last ounce of patience out of you, we've got people that think that a week or two's worth of rest will rejuvenate them for a whole new year of torture, and then, we use that week of rest to make food the whole day and try to fit to much into that time frame. This lead me to think: what if, on Christmas eve, you decide "this is it", and leave a breakup-card. (Needless to say my girlfriend has been looking at me strangely since reading the lyrics).

Werner dropped the axe, picked up a keyboard, and found a bass-y sound. We recorded the vocals, and then decided to have a bit of fun with it, so, on this song we have my dear girlfriend, Thea-Mari (whom is still my dear girlfriend) joining us on hand claps. At one stage she got hungry and went to get some cereal (but the milk was sour, so she ate it dry). We recorded her chewing, and loved the marching sound it made, so we left it there. (you can also hear some click track bleeding through, although very faintly)